In the electrical connection art crimping tools are widely known which crimp connectors or terminals to the stripped ends of electrical wire. Terminals are usually color coded for size in accord with national standards such as the National Electric Code published by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and other standards such as those published by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA). Traditional color codes include red, blue and yellow. The color coded terminals may be crimped to insulated or uninsulated wire. Terminals may be used with a range of wire gauges, typically from about 20 American Wire Gauge (AWG) to about 10 AWG. When used to crimped to insulated wire, the terminal usually includes a protective sleeve about a crimp end of the terminal. In this case, the crimping tool is used to crimp both the protective sleeve and the crimp end of the terminal about the stripped end of a wire to form a terminal-wire assembly.
One commercially available crimping tool includes three differently sized die pairs for crimping red, blue or yellow terminals. The tool includes three differently sized male die parts which are matingly accepted into a single female nest. Each male die part is color coded to match the terminal for which it is designed. A limitation of this tool is that it does not take into account different wire gages for each terminal. This configuration does not account for different wire gages for each terminal.
When crimping differently sized wires to a particular color coded terminal using the aforementioned crimping tool, particularly when crimping relatively large gage wires, high handle forces are necessary to provide sufficient crimping action. For example, using the crimping tool described above, the handle force necessary to crimp a 12 gage wire to a yellow terminal may be approximately 50 pounds, while the handle force necessary to crimp a 10 gage wire to a yellow terminal may be in excess of 70 pounds. Repeated application of handle forces in excess of 50 pounds can result in user fatigue and may also pose a risk of injury such as carpal tunnel syndrome.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,109,088 to Schrader et al., discloses a crimping tool having a re-positional die and a cooperating die for use therewith. The crimping tool 100, shown in FIG. 1, includes a die wheel rotatably connected to a frame of a crimping tool by a pivot pin and a mechanism for positioning the die wheel at predetermined rotational positions on the frame. However, this crimping tool has only a single cooperating die mounted to the frame for accepting the die wheel. This configuration necessarily results in uneven crimping due to the differential between the size of the various die configurations on the wheel and the universal die configuration of the cooperating die. It also does not take into account wire size differences for a given die combination. Such uneven crimping is not ideal.
There is a present need for a crimp die configuration and crimping tool which may accommodate not only a variety of color coded terminals, but also a variety of gages of wire to be crimped to such terminals.